Thoughts on Curiosity

I watched the live stream of Curiosity’s landing on Mars last night. For those of you unlucky enough to miss it, it showed the NASA Personnel at the Jet Propulsion Lab following the lander’s progress. It was incredible.

The tension as the people who’d put years of work into a daring project—throwing a complex, fragile, car-sized machine at a planet—finally waited to see if they had done every single thing right.

The small bursts of joy as preliminary stages went off without a hitch.

The final celebration when it landed perfectly.

The satisfaction on their faces as they allowed themselves to realize that they had done something nobody had ever done before. That they had done something for all of us.